Western democracies remain structurally blind to the influence campaigns being waged against them from authoritarian nations like China and Russia.

The blindness stems from a fundamental difference in views about data, security and the internet.

Western democracies' focus on technology may blind them to the psychology of information war.Credit:Bloomberg

Western countries fixate on the problem of cyber security and cyber defence - or even cyber warfare - as a way to secure their digital infrastructure.

But information security as conceived of by China and Russia is key to understanding the influence campaigns now intruding into the Western political sphere.

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The summit will feature the likes of Russia's Vladimir Putin, right.Credit:AP

Broadly, cyber security is seen as a technological discipline that involves securing computers and networks against hacking, viruses and malicious activity. It doesn't address the question of content.

Information security extends beyond cyber security to the protection of a political system by seeking to control the "information space" of the surrounding public and society.

On the globalised platform of the internet, authoritarian governments like those of Russia and China, who want to control their information space, and democracies that rely on an open but unpolluted commons, are colliding.

Information war is very different from cyber war. An image from classic 1983 hacking film War Games, starring Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy.Credit:United Artists

For years, the notion of 'information security' in places like Russia, China and the Middle East, seen through Western eyes, was viewed as a code for government censorship and propaganda.

The cyber security-information security split between democracies and autocracies was a matter for policy analysts, diplomats and regulators.

Security means information security in China. Credit:Getty Images

The Russian influence campaign that backed Donald Trump in the 2016 election changed all of that.

The fact that these two visions of internet security - cyber security and information security - coexisted for so long helps explain part of the shock that Western democracies have had in the past year.

Not just the Great Wall but the Great Firewall, too. Credit:Getty Images

History

Nevertheless, the signs of the cyber/information security culture clash have been there for some time.

Psychology once figured more prominently in popular culture. An image from the 1971 film A Clockwork Orange based on the 1962 novel by Anthony Burgess.Credit:Warner Brothers

In 2012, Western countries, led by Western technology companies (which work under their own culture and political presumptions) rejected a proposed change in an International Telecommunications Union treaty which tilted toward the information security model of understanding the internet.

"Spurred on by search giant Google and others, the Americans took a hard line against an alliance of countries that wanted the right to know more about the routing of internet traffic or identities of web users, including Russia," according to Reuters.

Security in authoritarian nations means also controlling the information space. Police officers cordon off a street at the presidential administration building during a protest in downtown Moscow, Russia.Credit:AP

At the time, nations like China and Russia suspected "the US of using the Net to sow discontent and launch spying and military attacks", Reuters reported.

For authoritarian nations like China and Russia, Western-favoured ideas available on the web such as 'human rights', 'corruption reform' and even 'democracy' were simply code for advancing Western power.

Conspiracy theory can be used to chip away at the notion of factual truth in democracies. (Picture: tweet from an InfoWars editor).Credit:Twttier/PaulJosephWatson

To that end, members of the "information security alliance" like China and Russia had long been developing deeper and more complex doctrines to control and influence the information that goes to their citizens - and beyond.

In 1999, before social media was invented, Russia responded to a United Nations request for input on the subject of information in the context of security, by saying there should be laws "preventing the threat of the use of information technologies and means to influence social consciousness with a view to destabilising a society and state".

Cyber security: It's not the same game as information security or information war.Credit:MOD/Wikicommons

Crucial to understanding Russian-style information war, the document showed "the duality of the Russian strategists' thinking, which combines a technological approach to information with a psychological one", she wrote.

Recent thinking in Russian information war focuses on conflict in a globalised "psychosphere" - people's minds and imaginations, independent of political and military boundaries.

Taking a strategic approach to news, websites, trolling and posting on social media, but also cable TV networks like Russia-backed RT and Sputnik, pop culture and spectacle, Russia has worked to render all information and news sources equally suspect in the minds of Western citizens.

The use of conspiracy theory, combined with amplified news about terror attacks and sexual violence, helps sow confusion and distrust in Western publics, which in turn corrodes faith in evidence.

"All these efforts constitute a kind of linguistic sabotage of the infrastructure of reason," writes Peter Pomerantsev. "If the very possibility of rational argument is submerged in a fog of uncertainty, there are no grounds for debate - and the public can be expected to decide that there is no point in trying to decide the winner, or even bothering to listen."

From that point, a society becomes much more vulnerable to manipulation. A recent report on so-called "alternative narratives" and conspiracy theories found on Twitter drives home the point.

In a 10-month examination of the "alternative media ecosystem" found on Twitter, Washington University's Kate Starbird concluded there was "evidence of intentional disinformation tactics designed not to spread a specific ideology but to undermine trust in information generally".

These sorts of "Leninist information tactics ... aimed to spread confusion and 'muddled thinking' ... as a way of controlling a society."

Once upon a time, psychology in the West was a dominant science for understanding society, people and institutions. It was frequently referenced even in popular culture.

But nowadays, concepts from the information sciences - basically the internet itself - help shape the popular understanding of other sciences.

And so today, when discussing influence efforts coordinated online on bots and social media - the focus on technology, and the hope for a technological solution - may actually blind people to the ultimate intended effects of campaigns, which can be more psychological in nature.

China

When it comes to information security, Russia is not alone. The Chinese Communist Party, which has sought to control what is 'fit to know' since the 1940s, began adapting to the realities of the internet once it came to China.

Like Russia, China has long advocated for information security through "internet sovereignty" - essentially, control over the internet their people interact with.

Beijing has achieved that to a large degree with the use of the Great Firewall, an immense network of censors and administrators to guide public conversation and filter out unwanted news from abroad.

As China's power grows, however, it is extending its information security reach outwards into the global sphere - and that has implications for countries like Australia.

Over time, such influence in the global information market nudges the public to accept a Chinese Communist worldview on topics of importance to the party.

Unlike the realm of cyber security, what's in play are ideas, perceptions, understandings, which can have vivid consequences for the direction of democracies in the world.

Internet 'freedom'

Most Western nations don't think along these lines when considering the internet.

The leading lights of internet freedom - focusing on online rights - have almost nothing to say about an internet used to sow false and divisive ideas in the public sphere.

Australia-based Digital Rights Watch proclaims that "a free and open internet is the cornerstone of a modern approach to human rights". The group's support of "democracy" calls for stronger oversight of intelligence agencies and transparency on trade deals that affect intellectual property, among other things.

The focus is on keeping the government out of data, ensuring privacy and supporting free expression online, all of which are important principles to defend.

But none of them address complex organised efforts to subvert, constrain or discredit stable, legitimate democracy using information.

Few organisations are focused on ensuring that the shared information zone of the internet isn't rendered useless for democracy by tainted information, propaganda or influence operations.

Yet the issue with information war is not so much about defending free speech – but defending the ideas that underpin functioning and productive democracies.

How to defend against an onslaught of information manipulation designed to wreak havoc on democracy, or to undermine the morale of its citizens, is an issue not even on the radar of the internet's most prominent defenders in the West.

And that is the heart of the battle.

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In order to defend the hearts, minds and systems of democratic governments, people in the West need to understand the fight on their hands.

Realising that the battle is much more about content and ideas than simply the integrity of that content's delivery would be a big step forward.